


Sail Away Sweet Sister

by zennies_jh



Series: Leaving Home Ain’t Easy [2]
Category: That 70s Show
Genre: Angst, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:26:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27195091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zennies_jh/pseuds/zennies_jh
Summary: Sequel to Keep Yourself Alive. Everyone has to cope with Jackie’s departure.
Relationships: Jackie Burkhart/Steven Hyde
Series: Leaving Home Ain’t Easy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985236
Comments: 25
Kudos: 63





	1. Doing All Right

As soon as Fez woke up, he instantly noticed the change in the apartment’s atmosphere. He knew as soon as he and Jackie walked in last night and she had wordlessly gone to shower that today would be a hard day for her. He fully expected not to see her much that day, maybe once or twice, and then she’d lock herself in her room and listen to Donny Osmond and Abba all day.

He got dressed for the day, picking out a satin purple paisley button-down, and tight brown flare pants. It was his day off, and he was going to spend it on the couch eating candy and watching TV. He’d go by the basement later.

As the hours passed, he became more and more worried. He looks at his watch and saw that it was nearly 2:00 pm and he had still not seen Jackie. She didn’t even come out to use the bathroom, or eat.

“Goddesses have to eat, damn it!” He thought.” Maybe she already left, I can snoop in her room and go through her underwear.” He giggled at the idea as he got up and headed towards her room.

He got up and knocked on her door. No response. She couldn’t still be sleeping, could she? It was her that told him that only burnouts slept past noon. No, she had to have left already.

“Jackie, are you in there? It’s 2:00. Are you sick from the creek? Ai- Damn Hyde!”

When he didn’t hear a response, he felt himself get excited at the thought of rummaging through Jackie’s room. But when he walked into the room, nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.

There was nothing. Her closet, left wide open, was empty. There were no sheets on her bed and all her makeup and beauty products were gone. All that was left was a nightstand, her bed, and her trash can, something small and brown sticking out of it.

Stunned, Fez felt himself run and open the bathroom door and rush to the shower. He immediately noted the absence of her scented shampoo and conditioner, and the fluffy pink robe that she kept in the bathroom was gone. Her toothbrush was missing, and Fez could feel his heart breaking. His goddess, his queen, and best friend was gone. First Eric, then Kelso, and now Jackie. What had happened to their group? The five people he considered family, who had listened to the story of when he lost his virginity and comforted him when he and Nina broke up?

Walking back outside, he noticed that her flower pillows were gone from the couch. She must have taken them too. He was sitting out here for hours, how had he not noticed every clue to her departure that had seemed so obvious? Thinking about what he knew about Jackie, a goddess who had a taste for dramatics, he concluded that she must’ve left a note. She wouldn’t just leave silently. No, Jackie Burkhart would want to leave behind an explosion in her wake.

An hour later, after searching every corner of the apartment that he shared with her less than 24 hours ago, he accepted that she had not left a sign of her leave. If he had not gone into her room, would he even know yet? And where was she? Maybe she’s staying at Donna’s? Or even the Forman’s?

But he knew better than that. He never said anything, but he’d watched as Donna and Hyde broke her down. She’d been building walls around herself and he knew months ago that it would only be a matter of time before she’d reach her breaking point. It had finally happened.

He felt his sadness over her leaving eclipsed by pride in his goddess. She had done it. She’d gotten the hell out.

Storming out of the apartment, he set off to the Forman’s. He didn’t know how everyone would react to the news about Jackie, but he knew he had to tell them.


	2. Long Away

Donna and Randy were sitting in the basement watching reruns of Charlie’s Angels when Fez stormed in, a grief-struck expression painted on his face.

“Fez, what’s wrong?” Donna joked. “Are they discontinuing Twizzlers or something?”

“Jackie’s gone,” Fez stated. He said it as a factual thing, as if he were telling her the weather for the day rather than news that their best friend was missing.

The blonde looked at him as if he grew a second head. “What?” She asked slowly. “Fez, what the hell are you talking about? What do mean ‘Jackie’s gone’?”

“I mean she’s gone! I woke up this morning and everything Jackie had was missing.” Fez cried. He really didn’t feel like reliving the moment he first found out. “Her room was empty and her car was gone! No note, no anything. She just left.”

“She just left without telling anyone where she’s going?” Randy inquired. “I don’t know Jackie very well, but that doesn’t sound like something she’d do at all.”

“It isn’t,” Donna said. “I know Jackie and she wouldn’t do that.” She turned back to Fez. “Fez, are you absolutely sure she didn’t leave a note or anything?”

“I searched the apartment for over an hour. There is nothing. I was hoping she would call here.”

“What the hell are you waiting for?” Donna yelled. “Go ask Mr. and Mrs. Forman!”

With that demand, she bolted past Fez and ran towards her bedroom, which she had once shared with Jackie. She ran past her dad, not even giving him a chance to ask what had happened. In her bedroom, she punched the wall and yelled “DAMN IT!”

She knew after the way Hyde treated her last night from the burns to pushing her in the creek, that Jackie would be a wreck today. Of course, Donna was no help herself, laughing at every spiteful word he had thrown towards Jackie.

She knew Jackie would be upset, but she’d never anticipated that Jackie would just _leave_.

She almost wishes she could feel betrayed by her best friend, but Donna knows deep down that she lost the right to even call her that anymore. When Sam had come through the Forman’s front door, Donna’s first instinct should have been to protect Jackie. After all, Jackie had always been a great friend to Donna, despite a bunch of cheap shots at her image.

Jackie had gotten her through endless amounts of fights with Eric. Jackie was there for her when Eric broke up with her. Jackie paid for the engagement ring. Jackie was even there when Eric bailed on their wedding.

And what did Donna do? She wasn’t there for Jackie when Hyde married someone else. She thinks it’s kind of stupid, how Jackie did more for her in situations that now seem so irrelevant, and when Jackie needed Donna the most, she buddied up with Sam.

Looking back, Donna doesn’t even have a good reason for how she treated Jackie. Maybe she was so mad at Eric that she took it out on Jackie. Maybe she was just trying to be friendly. Or maybe she was just being a bitch. But who knows? Maybe it doesn’t even matter anymore. Whatever the reason, it happened and now Donna had to face the consequences.

Earlier, when she had spoken to Randy and Fez, she boasted that she knew Jackie wouldn’t leave without a note or some indication of where she was going. But that was an outright lie. She didn’t know Jackie, not anymore. She used to know Jackie’s every move, what she would do next, and how she would react to every adversity that could come her way. How the hell did that all get lost in this mess?

“It’s gone because of you. _She’s_ gone because of you.” A little voice in the back of her head told her.

This was her fault. Her fault and Hyde’s. Even with Hyde treating her the way he did, Jackie might have stayed if she had a friend to grasp onto. The love of your life leaving you for another would be one thing, but having your best friend choose the other girl over you too?

Donna almost couldn’t blame her. After all, she had practically pushed Jackie out.

First, Eric had left her and now Jackie was gone too. And naturally, she’d found secondhand replacements for both of them. She had inadvertently allowed two new people to take up their spaces in her life. But it would never be the same again.

Because at the end of the day, Randy was no Eric. And Sam was no Jackie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!! I know I said I’d post this on Wednesday, but I finished it early and decided to post it today. I hope you like it! As always, please leave a comment with your thoughts!
> 
> My friend saw my folder with this and my other works I’ve already posted or are working on and asked me if I’d ever write anything that’s NOT angst or death or pain. So heads up, if I have a really fluffy piece out soon, just know it was due to peer pressure. 
> 
> Also, drop your favorite Jackie/Hyde songs. I am ready to hurt myself with them.


	3. Love of My Life

Steven Hyde sits on the stairs leading down to the basement. He’d gone upstairs to grab a beer, but the conversation he heard on his way back down caused him to lose all feeling in his legs. 

_  
"Fez, what's wrong?" He heard Donna ask as he made his way down the stairs. "Are they discontinuing Twizzlers or something?"_

_"Jackie's gone," Fez told her. Hyde stopped in his tracks, halfway down the stairs, where they couldn’t see him. He felt his stomach drop like he was going down on a roller coaster._

_He heard Donna ask, "What?" He recognized that voice. It’s the same tone she had when Eric announced his Africa trip. "Fez, what the hell are you talking about? What do mean_ ' _Jackie's gone'?"_

_"I mean she's gone! I woke up this morning and everything Jackie had was missing." Fez cried out. Her room was empty and her car was gone! No note, no anything. She just left."_

_Hyde’s breath caught in his throat. An unfamiliar feeling accumulated in his stomach. Fez is wrong. He has to be missing something._

_“She just left without telling anyone where she's going?" Randy inquired. "I don't know Jackie very well, but that doesn't sound like something she'd do at all."_

_"It isn't," Donna said. "I know Jackie and she wouldn't do that. Fez, are you absolutely sure she didn't leave a note or anything?" Hyde heard the panic in her voice, the same one that was rising in his chest._

_"I searched the apartment for over an hour. There is nothing. I was hoping she would call here."_

_His legs lost feeling, and he silently sunk down onto the step he was standing on._  


_“What the hell are you waiting for?" Donna yelled. "Go ask Mr. and Mrs. Forman!" He heard footsteps and a door slam._

Trying to process the conversation he’d just heard, his mind started to wander. No note? No announcement? There’s no way Jackie would do that. She’d want to make a spectacle of herself leaving. Make sure he knew that he was losing her forever. It’d be straight out of a chick-flick. 

Despite the constant numbness in his legs, he got up and walked back up the stairs, a clear focus in mind. He starts his El Camino and takes off to the old Burkhart mansion. This whole ‘leave unexpectedly’ move was impossible. It just wasn’t Jackie. She wouldn’t just leave Point Place. She didn’t have anywhere to go. And if on the off chance she did skip town, she had to have left something. A note, or at least a phone number to call. And there’s no way Fez looked everywhere. The poor kid just wasn’t perceptive enough. 

Nothing could’ve described what he felt when he reached her house and saw a ‘for sale’ sign on the lawn. A million thoughts ran through Hyde’s head all at once. Her family home was for sale? Did that mean that she was never coming back? But then he thought that maybe she was staying there until she could sell the house. It would make sense, staying until she had to money to go somewhere. So he turned his car off and approached the front of the mansion. He knocked on the door and waited for her to answer. But when the door opened, it wasn’t Jackie who was on the other side. 

A tall, leggy woman with dirty blonde hair and who was dressed in business attire stood in the doorway. She had green eyes and wore a genuine expression on her face. “Are you here for the showing? I’m Jenny, the real estate agent.” She looked over his shoulder, confused. “Over the phone, you said you were bringing your wife and kids.”

“Uh...no. I’m looking for the person who owns this place, is she inside?” “Oh! You’re looking for Jacqueline Burkhart, right?” He breathed an audible sigh of relief. She was here. “Yeah. Is she inside?” She smiled at him sweetly. “No, she’s not here. This house has been in her name since she turned 18, and she consulted me about selling it a few months ago. She didn’t want to go through with it, but this morning, she called me saying she had left town and that she wanted me to list the house.” She explained. “It’s a popular property, I already have a few showings.”

It was like a punch to his throat and stomach at the same time. Everything he’d felt since overhearing Fez and Donna rushed to the front of his mind. The panic and the dread.

“S-she left town? Do you knew where she went?” His fear overtook his Zen. 

Jenny must’ve noticed his panic because she answered him in a sympathetic tone. “No, she didn’t say where she was calling from.” 

But he was already rushing to his car, starting the ignition and speeding off towards Fez and Jackie’s apartment. She really is gone, but she had to leave something for them. For _him_.

When he reached the apartment, he lifts the doormat and finds a spare key. On a normal day, he would have smirked thinking about how predictable they were. A key under the mat? Typical. But this was not a normal day. The way it was going so far, it could very well become one of the worst of his life.

He turned the key to open the door and immediately noted the absence of her flower pillows. The pounding in his heart began to stagger. She’d taken those pillows everywhere with her. She had them in her room during that summer when he’d sneak in through her window. She brought them with her when she lived with Donna, and took them with her back to live with her mom. And they were here when she lived with Fez. Of course, she would take them with her if she left. 

If he felt bad before, opening the door to her room increased the pain tenfold. There was nothing but furniture, and the bed was bare of sheets. Her closet was empty and wide open, and he searched around the room for any sign of her. There was nothing. 

But then, he glanced down and saw something small and brown sticking out from the trash bin. He knew it was a dick move, going through her trash, but he picked up the box regardless. As he shuffled through the contents, he wished he hadn’t even seen it. A copy of 1984 by George Orwell. A small teddy bear he won for her at Six Flags. The grasshopper necklace he gave her for their first anniversary. And buried at the bottom of the box was his Led Zeppelin T-shirt. The one he gave her on her 17th birthday. It felt like metal rods were being shoved into his heart. His whole body went rigid. _This can’t be happening._

He didn’t know why he felt so...betrayed. Wasn’t he married to another woman? Didn’t he tell her he never loved her? _Didn’t he push her into a fucking creek?_ That’s not the type of thing you do to the woman you love. That’s not what a man does to the love of his life. He didn’t deserve to feel betrayed. He deserved for her to find a guy better than him in every way, to marry someone else, and to have that guy’s babies, all while he was forced to sit there and watch. He didn’t deserve to miss her. Not when he had practically pushed her out the door.

How had he let this happen to them?

He doesn’t have an answer to that question. Their fall from grace had been so quick. It moved so fast, yet so slowly. He knew it was happening with every burn he shot her way, but it was as if he was watching himself say these things in slow motion. Every bone and muscle in his body screamed for him to stop hurting her, to grab her in his arms and kiss her senseless, until he could absorb all the pain he’d caused her. But Steven Hyde was cursed with discordance between his heart and his brain.

Carefully, he lifted the old T-shirt in his hands and brought it up to his nose. It still smelled like her. He exhaled deeply, relished in the light breath of vanilla and jasmine that he’d been deprived of for far too long. He hadn’t even realized how much he’s been yearning for her scent. 

God, he missed her. It’s not just now that he didn’t know where she is. He’s been missing her for so long, since Sam walked through the door and he didn’t kick her out. Is it possible to miss someone this much? 

He didn’t know what he expected from her. Was he just expecting her to wait until he was done being a dickhead, and then he’d apologize and fight for her and promise to love her? Realistically, he knows that he’s lost her forever. They’re too far gone. He’s too far gone.

If this were a different world, they might be planning their wedding right now. Maybe they’d be living together, and she’d be beaming at him, her smile brighter than all the stars in the sky combined. Maybe in a year or two they’d have a kid, a daughter, and she’d look just like Jackie and they would be his favorite two girls in the world. Then, in a few more years, they’d have another kid, a boy this time. He’d be a good father, nothing like Bud had been to him. And he knew Jackie would be nothing like Pam. He’d still have Grooves, and he’d come home from work to be showered with hugs from his babies and to be kissed by his wife. They’d grow old together, watching as their kids went through the trials and tribulations of their own lives. They’d die together, holding each other and finding peace together in the afterlife. But that was in a different reality. Where he made better choices. Where he was a better man. 

What was he supposed to do now? Was he just supposed to go back home to his wife, pretend like everything’s okay, and that the world hadn’t just fallen apart at his feet? He couldn’t do that. As Zen as he was, he never could hide his love for Jackie. If he needed to hide it, aloofness was not the answer. The only thing that could mask it was destruction, her destruction. 

The searing agony of the past year came over him suddenly, all at once. His legs gave out and he collapsed, sitting on the floor next to the bed. 

What was he supposed to do now? He had no idea. She was the one real thing in his hellhole of a life story. She was the love of his life. 

But for now, he sat, paralyzed, on her empty bedroom floor, waiting for an answer to come to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So um...hey guys!! I’m so sorry this took so long. My dad surprised us with new phones and my storage got cleared, and this whole chapter got deleted. I rewrote it 3 times because I kept thinking it wasn’t as good as the first one, but I hope you like this one!
> 
> Also, my friend has bullied (peer pressured) me enough, so I may or may not have a fluff one shot that I’ll publish this week. As usual, comment and tell me your thoughts!

**Author's Note:**

> So this is definitely umm...terrible. I have a lot of trouble writing Fez, I think a lot of his storylines didn’t give him a chance for depth or character growth. That being said, I knew his point of view was necessary for this story. Anyways, bear with me, I swear it’ll get better!! Please leave a comment with your thoughts!


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